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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Ministry makes $15m from inspection stickers

by

Joel Julien
2027 days ago
20191019
Flashback January. Motorists wait in line to get their vehicles inspected at the Licensing Office in San Fernando.

Flashback January. Motorists wait in line to get their vehicles inspected at the Licensing Office in San Fernando.

RISHI RAGOONTAH

The rush for in­spec­tion stick­ers led to a wind­fall of more than $10 mil­lion for Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) ac­cord­ing to the draft es­ti­mates of rev­enue.

MOWT has es­ti­mat­ed that it would make $4.2 mil­lion from the sale of in­spec­tion stick­ers last year, in­stead, it made more than three times the amount.

Ac­cord­ing to the draft es­ti­mates of rev­enue the MOWT made $15.6 mil­lion last year from the sale of in­spec­tion tick­ets.

In 2018, $8 mil­lion was raised from the sale of in­spec­tion stick­ers.

These fig­ures co­in­cide with the rush by mo­torists to in­spect their ve­hi­cles last year fol­low­ing in­creased fines for non-com­pli­ance.

On Jan­u­ary 1 this year a fine of $5,000 came in­to ef­fect for ve­hi­cles miss­ing an in­spec­tion stick­er and valid cer­tifi­cate.

This dead­line came fol­low­ing a five-month mora­to­ri­um of­fered by Gov­ern­ment on Ju­ly 5 fol­low­ing a se­ries of com­plaints of over­crowd­ing at li­cens­ing of­fices.

Sec­tion 27(11) of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act (48:50) states: “(a) reg­is­tered own­er of a pri­vate mo­tor ve­hi­cle or mo­tor­cy­cle, pub­lic ser­vice mo­tor ve­hi­cle, rental car, goods ve­hi­cle, om­nibus or trail­er, who fails to pro­duce the ve­hi­cle for in­spec­tion or dri­ves the ve­hi­cle with­out ob­tain­ing an in­spec­tion stick­er and cer­tifi­cate in ac­cor­dance these reg­u­la­tions com­mits an of­fence and is li­able, on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion, to a fine of $5,000”.

Pri­vate ve­hi­cles are to be in­spect­ed af­ter five years from the man­u­fac­ture date, not the reg­is­tra­tion date, while trans­port ve­hi­cles are to be in­spect­ed one year af­ter the date of li­cens­ing.

The MOWT ex­pects to raise $8 mil­lion from the sale of in­spec­tion stick­ers this fis­cal year ac­cord­ing to the draft es­ti­mates of rev­enue.


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